Cake adventures

Cake making - success! Snoopy turned out marvelously, as did the gnome's wonderland, complete with adorable rock people :)

Next project? Maybe :) Maybe even in cake form. We'll see what I'm in the mood for in a couple weeks once we recuperate from the sugar overload!

Ready for spring

Yesterday was my last free day before spring classes start (sad day! although spring classes will be awesome, too.) Lots of good things happened:

• After much deliberating and shirking and dragging my feet, I finally signed a housing contract for fall - in the very same apartment I lived in last year - hehe. I liked it there. It was admittedly less fun to arrange considering I'll be starting over fresh with new roommates (since all the old ones have abandoned me for marriage or missions... growl) :D but hey, it will be a great adventure!
• Sewing success! This makes me happy beyond words, considering the epic Skirt Disaster or Apron Pocket Disaster or Pile of Unfinished Projects disaster. But, I am happy to report, the swimsuit top is now unique, attractive, and most of all, MODEST (hooray) and not to mention, the straps are the same width and length and the seams are straight (mostly) so I call that success!
• National Treasure 2. Other than Harry Potter, what better way to spend your last free afternoon than watching Ben and Abigail discover a giant golden city buried deep beneath Mount Rushmore? Seriously. Nothing tops it.
  
• And finally, library books! For all the free time I probably won't have :)

Good day. I'm ready for spring. Too bad there was a blizzard this morning...

I can't think straight...

Or eat. Or sleep. My attention span is about fifteen seconds. I've been having weird dreams. I had to watch all three Bourne movies yesterday and paint the kitchen to distract myself.

Sounds like I just had a breakup or something, right? Wrong! I'm leaving in 48 hours for my study abroad in Spain, and that is ALL I can think about! I feel bad for my mom who has to listen to me ramble constantly about it.

Last night I mostly packed my suitcase, and was pleasantly surprised at the room and weight I have left. Maybe I can take a couple more outfits after all.

Like I said, I also finished painting in my mom's kitchen yesterday. Part of the wall has been unpainted for about 20 years. It took me about three hours to finish it. It looks great now - just white, nothing fancy. I just have to clean up and put the kitchen back together.

I found a new quote by President Uchtdorf that I really like. It's about patience - it's posted on my favorite quotes page on this blog. I feel like it pretty much describes my attitude towards waiting for things of various natures.

Anyway, see? I can't focus on anything. So I'm going to stop blogging now. Two days!!!

Say goodbye to the playhouse... finally!

This weekend the Elder's Quorum came over and pulled down this building from our backyard - it used to be my playhouse/deck, but it was falling apart. They hooked a chain to a truck and after a couple attempts, it came crashing down! It was exciting - minus the guy who broke his leg... don't worry, he doesn't seem to mind that much. Which is strange to me, but I'm glad he's not too seriously injured and has such a great attitude about it.

Before ^
After v

The pile got bigger and bigger. It's about three times that size now, and they even took two huge trailer loads away.

Even the young men came and helped. And supposedly they're all coming again in a couple weeks to try to get some more done - this particular building was one of four other structures that have to come down. Yay for annhilating the yard as it currently exists! :D

The epic laundry room makeover

So here is a long overdue post about the painting project at my house... laundry room makeover. More pictures coming, of the walls, floor, etc... but for now, here's some random pictures of some of the furniture I painted, and also the Saturday wall-painting project with me and Cosette and Ashley. They were absolutely amazing to come and help! :)

My awesome painting friends :) I love these girls!

Yeah, it was exciting.

The two small cabinets - previously dark brown stain


One of the tall cabinets - previously dark brown paint

The cabinets - before.

More yard makeovers

More summer home improvement adventures: New porch and driveway. My mom and I came home from vacation to find this waiting for us. For free. Apparently it was a whole ward project, all secret and everything. People were up at 9 am on Memorial Day working on it for a lot of the day, and they repainted the posts on the porch, and patched up the grass around the edge of the driveway and everything.

See that stump? There was this obnoxious Chinese Elm tree on the edge of our property that overshadowed the whole front of the garden and dropped millions of seeds every year. They took that out, too.

This whole thing really made me appreciate the fact that I belong to this church. The gospel is focused on serving others, and being the recipient of such service made me want to serve more, because you never know how much it's going to mean to someone.

A whole new world...

I decided to blog about the yard remodeling we're doing all summer. Here's our beginning - taking apart the garden.

Before:


After: